OT: New - MSU BoT under Fire for Close Connections to Teams
MSU Board of Trustees are under fire for being too close to the sports teams. Trustees frequently flew on the team plane with the coaches and players - a practice that other BigTen schools say is very rare or prohibited. MSU blacked out many of the names and won't release details, but it seems as if this was common practice. Some of the trustees guest names were also blacked out - MSU said it blacks out all student names including players - were trustees often traveling with a student as a personal guest to these high profile games?
It raises questions if they want to see sports teams win so bad so they can ride with the team to great locations to see big games and then won't do their job properly - to oversee that the school runs appropriately.
When news came out about the 3 MSU players "seducing an unmarried woman," they had a closed door hearing with Dantonio - who they knew well from buddying it up on the team plane and then emerged saying everything was handled perfectly.
A Nassar victim said of the trustees members traveling with the basketball team to Knight Invitational:
"I will never forget the day that I sat in court to watch Larry Nassar sentenced in federal court, while photos were swirling online of the MSU Board of Trustees partying in Portland to celebrate Phil Knight's birthday," Nassar survivor Morgan McCaul said in an interview with the Free Press.
"It was an incomprehensible slap in the face, and I believe it speaks volumes as to the priorities of the board: money, reputation, and athletic success. And it was those twisted priorities, placed above the safety and well being of students and athletes on campus, that allowed Larry Nassar to prey upon young women for literally decades.
"They couldn't have shown their character more clearly."
UMBig11 said the media had some sort of an MSU football scandal...if this was it, I don't think it moves the needle much, but it does show the Spartan Nation mentality of sports first.
MSU always bitches about the Little Brother thing. It is actually helping them with the Nassar scandal. If this was USC, Michigan, OSU, etc. there would be so much more scrutiny from the local and national media.
Not this one. It will come out soon enough.
Good deal.
Soon enough means before Brian Lewerke's 7th year of eligibility, right?
God, I hope you are right. And you usually are!
That's not soon enough!
Wonder if it'll be on the first day of fall camp or something like that...
Also if umbig11 knows, then the MSU staff/team have to know / be prepared for it to drop, right? Not that it won't be a PR nightmare either way, but at least they can try to ready themselves for it...
They'll do the same thing they always do... deny, deny, deflect, ignore, wait til the media buzz dies down, then continue doing everything exactly the same.
Meanwhile their supporters pretend to give a shit for like 5 minutes, then say "they handled all of these unforeseeable events as well as they could."
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
And when then fails, they'll inevitably say "but... but... Brendan Gibbons!"
Is this the story that supposedly involves a woman's basketball player, and is suppose to come out next month? Getting hard to keep track of everything coming out of there.
Ran into a friend from HS this past weekend who walked onto the men's basketball team back in the late 2000s and he mentioned the Merchant thing was coming.
That being said, UMBig11 mentioned the story was football related IIRC.
Umbig11 burying the lead. C'mon man. Throw us a bone here. How big is this, 1-10? When can we expect this to drop?
To hell with MSU!
according to posts and rumors on other sites it's an 8 according to an ESPN reporter. Involves football and both men's and women's basketball. Multiple things apparently coming out. The one that has been mentioned the most is an alleged incident with several football players and a female basketball player. All coaches knew and covered it up, again, allegedly.
good lord man....trash organization
Is Mork implicated, because part of me wants him to stay and get crushed at home by Harbaugh before he pays for his societal failures that paid for his coaching successes.
Can't wait till Reschke is on the board in 20 years.
It is mortifying to share a state and a conference with that university.
Try living in Ohio
I hate Ohio State with a passion, but I will take a tattoo scandal over a rape culture any day. They aren’t even in the same stratosphere. MSU as an institution has shown themselves too incompetent to function as a university and I wouldn’t mind if they just stopped competing in college sports. They are an embarrassment to the state of Michigan
I wouldn't call it "rape culture" but there have been several recent incidents/accusations of issues with women involving OSU players and staff - Zeke, Gareon Conley, recently Zack Smith. Of course, Bucknuts or 11W will tell you this is a woman "out to get" the OSU player. You'd think by the 3rd time in a year they've recycled that defense they might want to have a moment of self reflection.
You forget that OSU operates in a bubble with no other major programs i the state, and are insulated by a rabid cult following. The Zach Smith stuff was buried for years until a leak recently brought attention to it. You can almost guarantee there is plenty of other stuff that goes on there that will never see the light of day. We know how Meyer operates.
Have you been paying attention? OSU is dealing with their own rape/sexual assault scandals (wrestling, diving, marching band.)
I don't see basset hounds on that list.
As much as I hate OSU, they don't have bestiality claims against them, so that still puts them above Sparty.
Point of information: Ohio State covered up a team doctor molesting athletes for years. The only point in OSU's favor is that now (finally) they appear to have hired a serious outside investigator to get to the bottom of it. Whether that will continue, and how they handle any of the findings remains to be seen.
Nice. Let's have a bunch of jock-sniffers running the largest university in our state.
Two things stood out to me in that article. The first regarding the fact that these tone-deaf assholes actually took a free trip joyride to NYC for basketball months after the whole Nassar explosion rocked campus. For that trip:
"MSU's trustees are required to get pre-trip approval, which is signed off on by the secretary of the board. That was Beekman, who was secretary of the board before being named interim athletic director."
And then of course he was named permanent AD with a photo op of him with the Toad and the Ewok smiling ear to ear. Well, of course they're happy. He's going to allow FB and BB to continue to get away with all the rapey stuff ad infinitum.
And then this comment from a Nassar victim:
"It was an incomprehensible slap in the face, and I believe it speaks volumes as to the priorities of the board: money, reputation, and athletic success. And it was those twisted priorities, placed above the safety and well being of students and athletes on campus, that allowed Larry Nassar to prey upon young women for literally decades."
More to the point, and I will fight people on this, those "twisted priorities" were not constructed to protect a doctor for the gymnastics program. They were there to protect Mork and Izzo, which they did on multiple occasions for both coaches. This is why Izzo and Mork have to be fired if they wish to cleanse the university of this scandal.
Assclowns, meatheads, and crooks.
I was at a work function (ok, it was a happy hour) yesterday, and I was telling a coworker about how I had lived in Lansing for a few years.
Her: "Is there even a university there?"
I can't tell you how happy I was.
Some things never change. MSU redacting information on dubious grounds. Clueless about how and why other schools take precautions to maintain oversight of athletic departments. Clueless about optics when in crisis. You have to wonder if they even give a damn.
I wish I had a Sharpie stand on university grounds.
SSDD. Nothing new here. They did a fine job of circling the wagons and defending the status quo that they operate under. I fully expect that nothing will be learned by anyone there and some day something similar will happen and the cycle will repeat.
Y'know like suing your insurance carriers to cover your own complete fuck-up.
https://www.mlive.com/news/index.ssf/2018/07/michigan_state_sues_13_insuran.html
I hate to say it, but it IS possible that some of MSU's insurers included liability coverage for sexual assault damages. There would probably be some restrictions around it, like, I don't know, "University must have been unaware of such actions prior to litigation."
But in general, insurance companies find any way they can do deny payments even in legit situations, those fuckers.
The article states that at least one insurer had liability coverage for "sexual or physical abuse or molestation". I get that it's in Staee's best (financial) interest to fight it and get them to pay something. PSU did the same IIIRC. It's just galling to see it happen knowing how badly they handled the abuse allegations and the subsequent actions/inactions.
When we lived in SF my wife was a freelance editor. One of the biggest jobs she had was cleaning up a manual for new insurance workers. Swear to god, the bulk of it was devoted to ways to delay or reject claims. It was good dinner party material.
Ever see The Rainmaker?
Most insurance policies have a stipulation in them that you must report knowledge of an occurrence that could result in a claim to the carrier as soon as possible and that failure to do so could result in a claim being denied. If MSU admin knew about Nassar’s actions for a decade or longer and never reported the allegations to their carrier, that could be the basis for carriers denying coverage.
So basically MSU took out insurance policies to cover for sexual misconduct liability....and kept Nassar employed after 2014 scandal which was dismissed but provided for Nassar to be chaperoned(witness anyone?) when conducting “sensitive” procedures....
there is no doubt that the powers that bee at that institution where well aware of what was happening and basically forced any victims to make them change. Disgusting and terrible no way in hell should anyone that was in a leadership position there be retained. How there is not a team of NCAA incestigators/ compliance officers mandated to monitor this univerisity in person is beyond me
I would not be surprised to find out the cheerleaders were fluffers for the coaches and BOT. Is there any lack of ethics or depravity that is out of bounds for MSU?
It is becoming increasingly obvious that the most important things to MSU's leadership is to win games in the revenue sports, particularly over Michigan. It might as well be their mission statement at this point.
I'm sending you a dollar.
lol , probably not far from the truth.
Actually the actual statement would be "To have more elite wins than michigan" lmao
I kind of felt like this was much to do about nothing. Members of the MSU community are fans of MSU athletics teams. Groundbreaking shit.
Partying with Phil Knight during the Nassar thing, probably a bad look. But generally I'd be fine if our regents attended athletics events, and as part of their compensation package, did so with expenses covered.
The winning at all costs thing is real - but the best example of that are the football players that went straight from jail to the football field, Glenn Winston, etc. - not a free flight and some tickets to a game.
Can you expect the Trustees to do their job of investigating potential crimes in Spartan Athletics when they ride on the team plane, sit by the coach, and have blacked out guests with them?
If this is to be expected, why did the Freep report that other BigTen schools don't allow this to happen except under rare circumstances?
For the same reason that some questioned Bill Scheutte's ability to investigate MSU fully, because he is BFF's with Dantonio...it is a conflict of interest.
My wife is a manager on the executive team at her company - she is told not to get buddy-buddy with those you are managing as it leads to a conflict of interest. You are suppose to reign in people and control the organization, which is hard to do when you are flying across the country to big sporting events and parties with them.
Yes, I do expect the BoT to put the MSU Community first and do their jobs. I don't think that conflicts with attending football games. If they don't, they should be fired.
Yes, I do think the BoT should be fired for not doing their jobs.
The Trustees aren't merely "attending football games" as you downplayingly say.
They are hanging out with coaches and players, riding on the team plane, going to exclusive parties.
They are fan boys. That is a problem for a trustee and a conflict of interest.
At a normal university with a normal BoT, you're probably correct that it's not that big of a deal. They're expected to be objective about their jobs, and most people can probably separate their fandom from their responsibilities.
For Michigan State though, they've already proven they can't do that. So while normally this might be much ado about nothing, for MSU it seems like another strike against them.
The issue is that the BoT is mandated to oversee the whole university. One important department is offering a lot of perks and members are accepting them. These aren't in the nature of free tickets that come with the job. Anybody can buy tickets. They're getting access not to available to others and that's especially attractive as long as two sports teams are successful.
There's an obvious conflict of interest when it comes to favoring the interests of the athletic department over other parts of MSU.
Unfortunately I am with MGrowOld on all this. This is absolutely nothing that will take down Izzo or Dantini.